Whenever someone insults another person, he attempts to shape the other’s identity. Each day every one of us faces identity issues, be it from friends, teachers, parents or strangers. In the short story “Harrison Bergeron,” by Kurt Vonnegut, and the essay “Living in Two Worlds,” by Marcus Mabry, the main characters face outside forces and expectations that shape their identities. Harrison Bergeron must wear all types of handicaps imposed by others in order to make his supposedly equal, while Mabry realizes that the more he lives the privileged live of a college student the further he moves away from the family and person he used to know. Therefore, both works support the idea that although our identities are always a complex mixture, the strongest influences are from outside of ourselves.
Whenever someone insults another person, he attempts to shape the other’s identity. Each day every one of us faces identity issues, be it from friends, teachers, parents or strangers. In the short story “Harrison Bergeron,” by Kurt Vonnegut, and the essay “Living in Two Worlds,” by Marcus Mabry, the main characters face outside forces and expectations that shape their identities. Harrison Bergeron must wear all types of handicaps imposed by others in order to make his supposedly equal, while Mabry realizes that the more he lives the privileged live of a college student the further he moves away from the family and person he used to know. Therefore, both works support the idea that although our identities are always a complex mixture, the strongest influences are from outside of ourselves.